


i've got the spirit, but lose the feeling

by armario



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Human!Outsider, M/M, Masturbation, Outsider!Corvo, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, pwp i guess, sigh, spoilers for doto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 03:21:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18490294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armario/pseuds/armario
Summary: The Outsider is mortal now, and someone else is taking care of the Void.





	i've got the spirit, but lose the feeling

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this on the notes of my phone for a year, found it today, and decided to bulk it out with some not-sex so here it is.  
> Bethesda: the Outsider is human now.  
> Me: sooo you mean he's really horny??

After the first few tumultuous days, Corvo finds time to settle down.

It was with horror that he'd realized what had happened. It had taken a while- many hours of getting to grips with the immense, overwhelming power the Void gives its divine, and how to use it to find someone who could explain how the fuck this was all happening. It happened to be Daud, or what was left of Daud haunting the Void. He found it unbearably funny that Corvo ended up like this.

"I asked Billie Lurk to kill the Outsider," he'd explained, "But in the end, making him mortal seemed just as good. And I... well, Corvo, you know how it is, it's hard to bring yourself to hate him."

Daud grinned knowingly, then carried on. "I had no idea there'd be a new Void god. And that it'd be you?" He snorted, then his features sobered up and he said in all sincere quietude, "It's the least I can do to offer you my help. Good luck."

 Since then, Corvo has tracked down Billie, who was equally surprised yet failed to really see the humor in the situation, something Corvo was also experiencing. After everything that happened, all he wanted to do was return to his daughter, live a little more peacefully knowing Delilah was gone, and perhaps set up a shrine to the Outsider to show his gratitude and that there were no hard feelings. 

Now, essentially, he  _is_ the Outsider. 

 His eyes turned black, whites obscured too, and now he can't even recognize himself. Void energy curls and shadows around him at all times, whispering in languages known and unknown.

  
 The Void is cold, freezing. He thought that since they'd... switched places, it would be easier. It's just as cold as when he'd been mortal, leading him to feel something like pity for the Outsider. Imagining him cold and alone for thousands of years.  
 He's been feeling that more and more lately- the pity- getting used to his new powers and their side effects. Everything is strange, different. He doesn't feel anything the same and he can see _everything_. That's the worst thing. The whispering. If he so much as thinks about Emily, his mind's eye shows him exactly where she is and what's she's doing.  
 Mostly, it's scary. Sometimes, useful. But today, it's horrendously inconvenient.

 Corvo was too busy getting used to his newfound immortality to consider in depth how the Outsider was adjusting to his lack of it.

 Corvo stares blankly, mouth comically wide, at what he's witnessing. Surely the Outsider _knows_. Knows that Corvo can see, couldn't _not_ see if he tried. (Perhaps he isn't trying as much as he should be).  
The ex-god has come to lie on his bed- once  _Corvo's_  bed, he indignantly notes- and pushed his pants down just enough to wrap a hand around his cock.

Men do this, that isn't abnormal. But watching the Outsider do it is far more taboo somehow than watching any other man. Perhaps it's because despite all evidence, the Outsider still isn't  _just_ a man, and watching him yield to such a mortal flaw seems blasphemous.

  
 Making a split decision, Corvo uses the powers he's still getting used to to appear in his room, the one the Outsider is using.  
"Please stop," he says through gritted teeth, not bothering to announce his presence, returning the favor.

 "Corvo," the Outsider returns, sounding somewhat breathless but unfazed. "I thought you might be watching."

 "I was trying not to," Corvo snaps. "I can't help it. But you can."

He's conscious of how ridiculous his request sounds.  _Stop masturbating like any warm-blooded man in the privacy of your own room, because it's making me want to fuck you._

 "Why should I?" the Outsider taunts. "You never did," he adds darkly.

 "So you were spying on me?"

 He's always suspected it, tried not to think what the Outsider has seen him do.

 "Like you say, it's impossible not to," the ex-god murmurs.

 Exasperated, the assassin turns around to see that the Outsider hasn't stopped on his request and continues to touch himself unabashedly.  
Corvo is about to object in embarrassed fury, when he realizes he can  _make_ the Outsider stop.  
 Concentrating, he reaches for the Void and manipulates it around the Outsider's wrists, pinning his hands in place.

 The man actually snarls, thrashing to get out of his bonds, but Corvo holds out.

 "I told you to stop," he says, calmly.

 "I _can't!"_  the Outsider shouts frustratedly. "Ever since I-" he stops, catches himself, and starts a little more plaintively, "I've been feeling everything at once. I don't know if that's how you always felt... I tried to stop, but I had to. I didn't think you'd care. I need-"  
He lets out a ragged breath. Corvo is enchanted by this new, desperate, uncertain, mortal Outsider, but it also feels wrong to his core. Every second of his lonely observations he's had to remind himself that this skinny, fragile, scared boy (because that's all he is) was once the most feared god in all the world. And now, that privilege has passed to Corvo- who doesn't seem to relish the power so much as the Outsider did; although given four thousand more years, he might become just as inhuman.

 The Outsider has the slightest bit more color in his skin, still pale but not corpse-like. His once ash-black eyes turned fever green, and now he moves like a normal man, clumsy without Void-given grace.  
He ruts up into the air seeking friction, albeit desperate, seeks release like anyone. Judging by his frustration, this is all new, all at once, and in a less uncomfortable situation, Corvo might find it funny.

 "I am quick to anger, and when I do, I rage. I am prone to sadness, or drowning in my woes. I am excitable as a child, unable to stop laughing. And my need," the Outsider lowers his voice in shame, "Is greater than it has ever been."  
"But have you have never felt some semblance of... this?" Corvo asks, helplessly curious.

Bound, the Outsider cranes his neck to look at Corvo. "Your eyes," he breathes, then shakes his head, asks mercy. "Let me, let me do this, Corvo. I let you, so many times."  
That may be true, but the Outsider was not in the room watching him through it, and Corvo is too affected by this display.

 "It's different," he croaks, clashing with the Void echo that wraps around his words. He can't take his eyes off the Outsider's mortal body that takes sharp breaths, hands clenched at his sides, pretty eyes screwed shut, swollen cock dripping onto his stomach. It strikes the new god now that it would be so easy, like squashing a fly, to kill the Outsider here and now without lifting a finger- something that, many years ago, bitter and terrified with the Mark still freshly burned onto his hand, he would have died for.

 "I don't want to beg," the Outsider says. "I have no power over you. You humiliate me..."

 "You do have power over me," Corvo mutters, cursing himself. A strange power indeed.  
He steps forward and sighs, committing himself to what he is going to do. Feather light, he drags his knuckles down the length of the Outsider's arousal.

 The Outsider lets out a high moan, still restrained. He bucks into Corvo's touch.  
"You suit this," he confesses in between soft, shameful moans. "You suit the Void."

 "You don't suit humanity at all," Corvo murmurs honestly, curling his fingers round the Outsider's cock and indulgently stroking its length. "But you do look pretty like this."

 "Don't say such things," the Outsider almost wails.

 "You're close," Corvo observes, smirking. He doesn't have to endure the shame that the Outsider does right now, the Void makes sure of that, freezing his emotions so that he has to fight to feel anything. He feels this, but less desperately than a mortal.

 "Please," the Outsider whispers, so quiet it's almost inaudible.

 Corvo acquiesces, grip firm, and feels the Outsider's cock twitch cum over his hand, which he removes through useful supernatural means without effort. He watches his skin stretch taught over brittle ribs with laboured breaths, takes note of the crescent-moon marks gauged into palms from trying to keep still. He sees delicated eyelids shut and if the positions had been reversed, which he is now understand as not so far-fetched as he'd once assumed, the Outsider would now have returned to the Void already with cruel laughter on the wind, leaving Corvo to shame and second-guess.

 But Corvo is not that kind of god. However far from human he's recently been feeling, he'll never be so vindictive. 

Glad for the fact the Void helps him seem perpetually unruffled, he sits on the bed and curls his fingers in the Outsider's hair. He'd always wanted this. It feels soft and downy, a little slick with sweat.

"It's been difficult for both of us," he sighs. 

The Outsider opens his eyes, and one thing Corvo didn't steal was the weight in his gaze. When you have lived for four thousand years, your god's eyes don't need to be pupil-less black. "I'd truly forgotten what it's like to feel," he admits. "Without the Void filtering it for me. You may hate it now, Corvo, but it's a gift. The last few millennia are catching up with me. Everything I chose not to feel is coming back to haunt me."

"Do you want to go back to how things were?" Corvo asks. He's been wanting, needing to ask, because it's so hard to tell. For him, it's very clear-cut; he hates being the Void god. Whomever, or whatever, deemed him worthy of it made a huge mistake, and he'll do anything to return to humanity. To return to Emily in some form other than dreams. But the Outsider is utterly lost, spending every waking moment complaining about his mortality and all its woes, and every night when he sleeps, he joins Corvo in the Void. And yet- sometimes, he'll find such joy in something he'd forgotten that Corvo wonders if he didn't want this all along.

"I don't know," the Outsider says. He laces his breeches back up and sits up on the bed, taking Corvo by the wrist. "But I know that I don't want this for you. You don't deserve it. Whatever I decide, I'll help you come home."

 Corvo is taken aback by the rare and earnest solemnity in his tone. 

"Next time this happens," the Outsider diverts, and then with a darker tone, "as it surely will, you're free to... assist, or observe. I won't mind."

"Good to know," Corvo answers awkwardly, and when he goes to sheepishly rub at his neck, the Void seems to force his hand into stillness, as though it's patiently tutoring him in godliness. He traces his thumb over a pale, delicate wrist instead. He'll leave the Outsider be, no doubt to meet him in the Void later, but for the mean time, he's got to figure out how to get out of this. A conference with Billie, perhaps with Daud if his spirit will show itself, and then onto more research into his current predicament... a sense of urgency follows him. In time, he may need to recruit his own Marked. 

He fades away into the Void; once hell, now home.


End file.
